


Dutch Courage

by rufeepeach



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-09-03 10:46:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8709403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rufeepeach/pseuds/rufeepeach
Summary: While staying with her best friend Neal over the summer, Belle can't help but fall for his handsome, intelligent, lonely father Mr Gold. Belle knows nothing can come of a crush on a man twice her age, much less her best friend's dad, and for his part Gold is well aware that it would be deeply inappropriate to proposition a friend of his son's, however well they might get along. However, after a night of heavy drinking finds her knocking on his bedroom door at midnight, things quickly spiral out of control.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This started (and continues to be) a prompt 'verse, born from my anti-canon spite prompt-a-thon on Tumblr. I'm still taking prompts for it, but I have some ideas of my own as to where it might go :D

_“The worst part is when you get The Fear,” Ruby explained. Belle nodded sagely, trying desperately to impress the older girl in front of her. First year of college, virginal and bookish, Belle couldn’t imagine why Ruby Lucas, of all glamorous, beautiful people had decided to take her under her wing, and out for a drink at the campus bar._

_“What’s that?” she asked, when Ruby didn’t elaborate._

_“That feeling when you wake up, and you have no idea what you drank, where you are, or who you’re in bed with,” Ruby smiled, and took a sip of her cocktail. “And you panic, because for just a hot second you can’t tell if you’ve ruined your life.”  
_

Belle had never really known what Ruby was talking about that night. Soon after she had met George, and after George came Ariel, and after Ariel came Will. All calm, happy, steady relationships: no risk, no Fear. Belle rarely drank more than three glasses of wine in the evening, and had certainly never woken up anywhere she didn’t recognise.

That was until this morning. Now, Belle knew exactly what Ruby had meant by ‘The Fear’. She had no idea where she was, how she’d gotten there, or whether whatever she’d done was going to ruin her life. She squeezed her eyes shut. For a moment, she was certain there was something she didn’t _want_ to remember, and whatever it was she fought back.

It was mid-morning, that much was certain, with the golden light peeping through the closed curtains. She wasn’t hungover, at least not badly, so whatever she drank it hadn’t been too much. The bed she had slept in was beautiful, soft and warm and covered in silk sheets. Tall windows with heavy ochre curtains lined two walls, and the ceiling was cream with slight gold accents, a swirled pattern that belonged to a different century.

Neal must have put her to bed after the night they’d had, Belle thought with a groan, her hand covering her face. They’d stayed up in the large front room, catching up on everything they’d missed since graduation, swapping war stories and cleaning out his father’s impressive liquor cabinet. She must have passed out, and Neal being the good guy he was wouldn’t have left her to get a cricked neck downstairs, right?

That didn’t explain why she was naked, though. She hadn’t realised it until she moved, but the silk slid sinuously against her bare skin. Neal wouldn’t have stripped her before putting her to bed. They were best friends, but they’d always been more like siblings than anything else. And Belle didn’t think she’d have been so uncomfortable in her dress to make the effort to take it off herself…

A noise from beside her - a soft exhale, like a sigh - startled her. She rolled onto her side, and couldn’t keep a small, shocked noise from escaping her lips as she started, and pressed a hand to her mouth.

She knew exactly whose bed she was in. And apparently, Mr Gold knew she was in it, too. Naked.

“Well,” he murmured, his voice low and soft with sleep, “Good morning to you too.”

“I… hey?” she stammered, racking her brain, trying to explain this nightmare. Not that the thought of being naked in bed with Neal’s gorgeous father was a nightmare. In fact, it had been something of a daydream of Belle’s ever since she’d given him a tour on parents’ day, when Neal had gotten tied up with work and begged Belle to entertain him for an hour. She’d been half in love with him for years, with his rolling Scottish brogue, his deep dark eyes, his impossibly sharp and clever mind and his dark sense of humour. 

It could never happen - she was only 23, only just graduated, and he was her best friend’s father. It hadn’t stopped her from indulging in some filthy fantasies every now and then. How many times had she imagined running her hands through his hair, kissing him, finding out exactly what that silver tongue and those long fingers could do when set to work?

Her face flushed beat red, and she covered it with her hands so he wouldn’t see. She knew _exactly_ what they could do. The memories flooded back, and played out behind her eyes. He’d shown her his capabilities, over and over again, just the night before. He’d brought her to completion five or six times with his mouth and his hands and his cock, and now she was properly awake, it was all there in glorious technicolour. The memory of his tongue between her legs sent an entirely inappropriate, unwanted shock of heat through her. A part of her mind in direct communication with her libido wondered if he was up for round two.

“You don’t remember,” Mr Gold nodded, and closed his eyes, rolling onto his back with another low sigh. “Well, I suppose it’s understandable. But I _do_ remember, and what I remember is that I took advantage of my son’s best friend,” he swallowed hard, his eyes squeezed tight. “It would be best if you left now, I suppose.”

And as she truly began to wake, Belle’s memories woke with her: saying goodnight to Neal, finding her way to her room, and then… and then stopping. She hadn’t been that drunk. She’d heard someone moving around, the light clicking in the ensuite bathroom of the master bedroom. Not the guest bedroom, but Neal’s father’s.

She’d knocked on the door, to a room that wasn’t her’s. A light had appeared under the door. Footsteps; a cane tapping, and then the door opened and there he’d stood. How could she have forgotten that, even for a few sleepy moments? He’d stood there all rumpled in his pyjamas, his hair mussed and his eyes so warm and dark. He’d been heart-stoppingly beautiful, and she couldn’t remember why this was a bad idea.

They’d spoken for a few minutes. Then Belle had kissed him. 

“I remember,” she breathed. “I do, I… God, I remember _everything_.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, immediately. “You were drunk and you said you wanted this  and… and you’re so  _beautiful_ ,” he shook his head. “Not that that’s an excuse. I should have stopped this. You’re Neal’s best friend, you’re half my age, it’s no excuse.”

“I saw your door…” she said, still working it through in her mind. He thought she was beautiful. She filed that away for later daydreams, should she make it out of this with her crush on him in tact. “I saw your light on, I knew you were awake, and I… I wanted to know what would happen. What… what it would be like.”

“What what would be like?” he asked, frowning. They hadn’t sat up, although Belle knew it would make talking easier. It was as if they both knew that would break whatever it was they’d created last night. 

“Being with you,” she admitted. There was nowhere to hide from it now, no way to deny it. She’d come up to Storybrooke to see Neal, but not _just_ to see Neal. “I’d imagined it for so long.”

His eyes widened, and for the first time Belle saw Abraham Gold at a loss for words. He blinked for a few seconds, unable to comprehend what he was hearing. She bit her lip, and waited for his thoughts to catch up with him.

“And, ah,” he stammered. She wanted to kiss him again, it was so sweet how he was speechless over her. He was always so imposing, so in control, and that in itself was sexy as hell, but it was this softer side - rare but so real, so pure and sweet - that had drawn her to him so strongly. It was that side she knew she could fall in love with. “Was it as good as you hoped?”

“It was better than I’d ever dreamed,” she breathed, wondering now - however foolishly, however stupidly - if there was time for more of the same. She might never get another chance, she thought. Such thinking had gotten her into this in the first place.

“R-really?” he looked doubtful. She nodded.

“Really. Five or six times better,” she winked, and his jaw dropped when he caught her meaning. She laughed, and he managed a small smile, eyes gleaming. 

She leaned in, and brushed her lips against his, gently, tenderly, unable to resist. His mouth was warm and soft, and for a moment he just lay there, stunned, letting her kiss him. Then he was kissing her back, increasing the pressure and cupping her face with his hand, bearing her backward, onto her back, blanketing her body with his, and he was naked too, and hard, and his tongue was playing with hers and-

There were three sharp raps on the door. “Papa, you up yet? I can’t find Belle!”

Gold's eyes widened in panic, and he turned to Belle, his mouth agape. She thought quickly, her mind a panicked whorl herself, and suddenly remembered another piece of Ruby's sage wisdom:  _'When in doubt, hide in the bathroom: it's the best place to cry, vomit, fuck a stranger, or avoid your problems'._

She gestured to the door to the ensuite. Gold nodded, his eyes still wide, and Belle darted for the door. She only just got it closed before she heard more knocking, and Gold's voice, muffled and mumbling as if half-asleep, "What, Neal?" 

Belle pressed her ear to the door, and heard it open. Neal's voice came clearer now, "Belle's not in her room, I wondered if you remembered if she had plans? We were supposed to go to Granny's for breakfast but I can't find her, and her cellphone's still here."

"How should I know?" she heard Gold reply, grumpily. "She's not my guest."

"I... papa?" Neal's voice came louder, suspicious, and Belle remembered with a sinking stomach exactly how she'd gotten from the door to the bed the night before. Her clothes made a neat trail across the bedroom floor, and in her panic to get into the ensuite she hadn't thought to collect them. "Why are Belle's clothes on the floor?" Neal's voice was rising with a panic that, ironically, matched her own. She winced: she'd not thought about how he'd feel about this. She didn't want to lose her best friend over a one night stand, however magical it might have been. However much deeper she knew her own feelings ran than merely sexual. She knew Gold couldn't feel the same way, and last night changed nothing. She knew she was attractive, and she knew few men - lonely and single or otherwise - who would turn down a drunken offer of sex. What else was he going to do, when she had all but presented herself at his door in the middle of the night and thrown herself at him? 

She hoped to God that Gold's silver tongue could get them out of this, the way it had - in a much more physical sense, the memory of which still made her tremble just thinking about it - gotten them into it. She couldn't lose her best friend, not now, not when so much was so uncertain. And she couldn't bear it if she damaged the vital relationship between father and son, either. She knew how much the Gold men meant to one another. 

There was a pregnant pause. Belle pressed her ear to the door, desperate to hear what was happening. There was a rustling of sheets, and then she heard Gold’s voice.

“Well, there's your answer, son: your friend has terrible manners,” Gold sighed, as if annoyed. “I believe yesterday I offered to let her use my shower, she said something went wrong with the one off the hall. I suppose she must have decided to take me up on it this morning, and I didn't hear her as she crossed my room. I was dead to the world from about four am, I'm afraid: I didn’t get a great night’s sleep.”

“So she… got naked crossing the room to the bathroom?” Neal sounded doubtful. “That’s weird.”

“I'm sure I wouldn’t know,” Gold said. “She’s your friend, Neal. I barely know the girl.”

Belle ran to the sink, and turned on the faucet. She shoved her head under the stream of water, and then used a loofah to wet her arms and legs, to make it convincing, then wrapped herself in a huge fuzzy red towel.

“Neal!” she cried as she opened the door. “I thought I heard you!”

“You were… in my dad’s shower?” Neal asked, his face a picture of confusion. “But why are your clothes out here?”

“I fell asleep in my clothes last night,” Belle explained, trying to look shamefaced. “Honestly, I just wanted to be out of them - they stank! I’m so sorry, Mr Gold,” She ran to the clothes and gathered them in her arms, knowing she was flashing him a lot of cleavage and thigh in the process. She didn't have to pretend to be flustered by the whole awkward situation. “I wasn’t thinking, that was so _rude_ of me!”

“It’s no matter, dearie,” Gold waved a hand, as if he didn’t care, as if she were a minor irritation at most. “Just try and be tidier next time, hmm?”

“I will,” she nodded. “I will! I’m so sorry.”

She ran out past the pair of them to her room, her face flaming and heart racing. She hoped Neal had bought it. She wished she hadn’t just blown her chance at an actual shower, since she really needed it. 

There was more talking, and a request for a breakfast run to Granny’s, since apparently her and Neal's plans - how had she forgotten? - had sounded so good to his father. She heard Neal’s footsteps down the stairs, and then the front door opening and closing. They were alone again. 

She crept back out of her room, still wrapped in the towel, and saw Gold on his threshold, watching her. He’d pulled on a pair of pyjama pants and his robe, but she could see a triangle of his bare chest where the robe parted. She wanted to follow the line of it with her tongue.

“I’m sorry,” she said, swallowing hard, trying to suppress such dangerous thinking. “I’m really sorry, but… well done for the quick thinking, I guess?”

“Indeed,” Gold’s face was unreadable, and Belle swallowed hard, wishing she knew what he was thinking. “I lied to my son,” he said, then. His voice was choked with guilt.

“You didn’t want to freak him out over nothing,” Belle said. “It’s understandable. And this was my… this _is_ my fault. I didn’t want it to cause an issue between you. I'm sorry if I have.”

“Right,” he nodded, and swallowed hard. “Over nothing, right.”

“I mean, this is nothing, right?” she fiddled nervously with the bottom of the towel covering her. 

“Right,” he nodded again, smiling, and she tried not to notice how that smile had slid like a mask over a different, far less easy expression. She had the strongest sense that he was unhappy, and not about having lied to Neal. Did he want this to be more than it was? Was it possible he was as attracted to her as she was to him? There was only one way to find out.

“How long will he be out?” she asked, stepping closer to him, crossing the landing in a few quick steps. She saw the way his eyes caught on her breasts, barely hidden by the towel clutched around her. She remembered just what they’d been about to do when Neal burst in.

“An hour, maybe?” Gold replied. “It’s fifteen minutes there and back, and Granny isn’t quick about her cooking.”

“Good,” Belle smiled. “Because I could really use a shower, and I can’t take one if Neal is here since he thinks I already did.”

“Well, ah,” Gold swallowed hard, and his hand came to fiddle with her towel just as hers did, his eyes not meeting hers. There was a smile tugging at his lips. “We can’t blow your cover, can we?”

“You can shower, though,” Belle reminded him, wondering if she was pushing too hard. This couldn’t become anything, much as it hurt her heart to admit it, but once again Ruby’s voice filtered through her memory:  _“Great oral doesn’t come around every day, you know.”_

At the time, Ruby had been justifying sleeping with their TA three times, despite knowing the faculty were off limits and she was on thin-ice as it was. It seemed to apply just as well to this situation. Sex didn’t have to mean anything, did it? And this would probably be her last chance with the man of her dreams.

“I can,” Gold agreed, smiling as he caught on to her insinuation. “And who am I to deny a beautiful young woman the chance to get clean?”

Belle grinned, and took Gold’s hand in hers, letting her towel fall to the ground. His eyes raked over her naked body, pupils blown, and a glance down told her he very much enjoyed the view. He swallowed hard, and his voice came hoarse. “You should pick that up,” he said. She nodded: no need to repeat the same mistake again.

She folded the towel over one arm, and let go of Gold’s hand so she could sprint across his bedroom, and into the ensuite. “Aren’t you coming?” she asked, with a glance over her shoulder. She laughed, watching him move faster than any injured man should have been capable of to join her, shedding his clothes on the ensuite floor and closing the door. Gold plastered himself to her back, and reached in front of her to turn on the shower. “We have maybe twenty minutes,” he warned, his voice a low rumble against her neck, kissing it a moment later. “And then you’ll need to be quick getting dressed.”

“Deal.”

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now a step back to the night before the morning after, wherein Gold makes a stupid (wonderful) mistake.

As a rule, Gold abhorred house guests.

Oh, he had space for them: his six-bedroom Victorian mansion could accommodate a small army, should he desire it so. It had always been more than a little oversized for a single father and his son, but he hadn’t chosen it for that purpose. It was the largest house on its street, itself the most affluent street in town, and so it served its purpose: it reminded all who saw it exactly who held the balance of money and power in Storybrooke. The guest rooms were exquisitely decorated repositories for his collection of art and antiques, and most of all for his books. 

When Neal had lived at home, for the first ten years they had lived in Storybrooke, it had felt rather homey all things considered. Neal was never a quiet child, and had filled the halls with his conversation, his ready laughter, and - as he grew older - the endless noises of his music player and video games.

Then Neal left home. The house went quiet. And ever since, Gold had regretted the cacophonous silence of his empty rooms, the stillness of the place, the coveted size and opulence of the house only serving to remind him of how alone he truly was.

Neal returned home often, at least by the standards of the average college student. After the trials of Neal’s youth - the fighting, the teenage rebellion and petty crime, and even one ill-fated runaway attempt after a fateful conversation with his mother - he had learned that he always had a stable, welcoming, supportive home with his father. But Neal was twenty-three years old, and Gold knew the days of his being able to spend weeks over Christmas and months in the summer at home with him were drawing to a close. Neal was looking for jobs in Florida, where his girlfriend was lined up to start at a police academy in Tallahassee, and once he was gone he wouldn’t have a lot of time to come back.

Gold would do anything to spend time with his son, and that included allowing his best friend to stay with them for a few weeks over the summer.

Not that Belle French was a poor choice for a house guest. Of all the friends Neal could have invited, she was easily Gold’s top pick. She didn’t fill the house with the sick-sweet stench of marijuana (as his old friend August had), or spend half her time complaining about the lack of good shopping in rural Maine (the least of Gold’s complaints about Neal’s ex, Tamara). 

In fact, even without those inauspicious comparators, Belle was remarkably good company. She was erudite and well-read; she was more than capable of holding her own, and even revelling, in a good verbal sparring match; and she even seemed to share and enjoy his odd little sense of humour. More than that, she was endlessly kind and generous, conscientious almost to a fault, with a genuine desire to do good in the world. There was a light to her that radiated out. And, to make matters worse, she was also stunningly beautiful, all chestnut curls and bright, sparkling blue eyes.

Had she been ten years older, Gold might well have entertained some ridiculous, half-baked, helpless fantasy about one day inviting her to dinner. But Belle was Neal’s contemporary, twenty-three and recently graduated, and even without the twenty-five year age gap she was still Neal’s best friend. Gold was many things: a loanshark, a ruthless businessman, a beast and a tyrant. He was not a lecher. He had never wanted - and would never allow himself - to become the sort of terrible old man whom his son could not trust around his female friends. 

And so, he entertained no such thoughts. He made sure to barely think of her at all, which had been easy in the first three years he knew her. He saw her only at campus events, and then almost always in Neal’s company. There was never any reason to contact her outside of that, despite how stimulating he always found their conversations, or how he could swear she enjoyed them as much as he did.

But then, Neal had asked whether she could stay over the summer. And, like the fool he was, Gold could deny his son nothing. Belle was installed in the largest of their guest rooms, and Gold’s problems increased tenfold

When Belle had lived in Boston, a mere acquaintance via his son, Gold had had little reason to dwell on their encounters. Now, however, he saw her every day. Neal was always busy: he had a summer job at the cannery, and his hours were onerous. By stark comparison, Belle was unemployed, seeking a librarianship in the area. Which meant she was almost always in his home.

She cooked dinner, some nights, humming under her breath as she made his kitchen her home. She would cross the landing from her bedroom to the bathroom with just a towel around her petite body, and flash him a wide smile when she caught him looking, apologising for the “towel-dash”, explaining she hadn’t brought her bathrobe. She would talk to him for hours over dinner while Neal dozed in his seat, or share a hot drink with them in the living room before bed. Within a week she had slipped into their routine as if she belonged there, as if she simply filled a long-vacant space perfectly shaped for her.

Neal worked, slept, and ate: they saw little more of him. It fell to Gold to entertain their guest, a task he would have hated with anyone but her. With her, he enjoyed it just a little too much. Belle apologised a hundred times for monopolising his time - she just didn’t know anyone, and she wanted to be a good house guest - and never once could he understand how she could believe her presence to be an imposition.

Belle was perfect: beautiful and bright, quick and kind. She was also completely out of his reach, too young and too good, and Gold made sure to remember that.

He was grateful when, two weeks into her stay, Neal arrived home early and announced that he’d quit his cannery job, having earned enough to survive the rest of the summer. Gold rather thought his decision had nothing to do with money, and everything to do with hating the foreman - a gormless former high school football star named Sean whom Neal had hated then, too - and having finally snapped and told him exactly where he could shove his time cards. 

That night, Neal announced his intention to finally spend some time with his best friend, and to drink away his memories of the cannery. Gold, tactfully he had thought, had retired to his study to work while the pair of them enjoyed his liquor cabinet. At eleven pm he crossed the landing to his bedroom, and heard raucous laughter and slurred speech from downstairs. Apparently the party was only just getting started.

He changed for bed, washed and brushed his teeth, and settled in with a good book. It wasn’t a title he’d read before, but Belle had agreed to give Graham Greene another try if he made it through Angela Carter, and the more he read the more he was enjoying it. 

At midnight he set down his book, and got up to use the bathroom before sleeping. As he returned to bed, he heard footsteps outside his bedroom: Belle and Neal had called it a night, by the sound of it.

He pulled back the covers. There was a knock at the door. 

Gold picked up his cane, and frowned in confusion as he made his way to answer it. He couldn’t imagine Neal needed any assistance getting to bed - Gold knew he was a far more proficient drunkard than to need his father’s help. Perhaps there was an emergency? His pulse quickened at the thought: had Belle gotten hurt?

He opened the door slowly, and his confusion only deepened when he saw who was standing there. “Belle?”

“Uh, hi, Mr Gold,” she scuffed her feet, her hands twisting nervously before her, but although her cheeks were flushed from drink her words weren’t too slurred.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, “Is something wrong?”

“No, nothing’s wrong,” Belle shook her head. “I… Neal went to bed and I… I realised I hadn’t said goodnight to you.”

“Oh,” Gold frowned, completely thrown now. What on earth was she doing here? “Well, goodnight, Belle.”

“Goodnight, Mr Gold,” she said, her voice the warmest, softest sound he’d ever heard. Her eyes met his, shining in the warm lamplight from his bedroom, and he couldn’t help but notice - for the thousandth time - how incredibly beautiful she was. 

“Belle?” he prompted, when she didn’t move. She started, as if she’d forgotten herself.

“Yes?”

“Was there something else, sweetheart?” he asked, the endearment slipping out before he could stop it. Her breath hitched; her cheeks flushed. He could account for neither reaction. 

“I… I just wanted to see you,” she said, fidgeting. “Neal told me you just broke up with your girlfriend? You never said anything.”

Gold sighed, closing his eyes against the crushing wave of humiliation. She pitied him, then. The old, gnarled beast alone in his tower. “She broke up with me,” he replied, crisply. “Better offer.”

“How could that be?” Belle asked, swaying just a little, her eyes unfocused. How much had she had to drink? How much of this would she remember tomorrow?

“Oh you know, a beautiful woman meets the handsome, biddable heir to a fortune, who could blame her?” He swallowed hard, the memory of Cora’s betrayal still bitter in his mouth. Neal only knew the basics - he’d been in a relationship with a woman from Boston for three months, it had ended, Gold didn’t care to talk about it - but apparently he’d attached more weight to the issue than Gold had intended.

“She’s an idiot,” Belle told him, firmly. She took his hand in both of hers; Gold shivered at the contact of her soft skin against his.

“She’s a pragmatist,” Gold sighed. “And you’re drunk.”

“I’m not that drunk,” she denied, shaking her head, her dark curls swaying at the adamant motion. “I just don’t want to see you lonely. You don’t deserve to be lonely.”

“The world begs to differ, dearie,” he replied, and he intended it to come out wry and dismissive, shut down whatever drunken feelings she felt the need to express. He hated that it sounded pleading, even to his own ears: as if he begged her to prove him wrong.

“Then the world’s an idiot too,” she retorted. “Because you’re wonderful. You deserve everything you want.”

His breath caught at the look in her eyes, when she chanced a glance up from her contemplation of their joined hands on the top of his cane. He had tangled his fingers with hers without even noticing. There was no way she could know that he would include her in that list. Her existence proved her statement wrong: he could never deserve someone as lovely as her.

“Not everything,” he said, hardly recognising the soft rasp of his own voice, the hunger beneath it. 

She shook her head, as if to disagree with the entire sentiment with just that small motion. She was smiling, her breath coming quick, as if she were nervous or excited. He had no idea what was happening behind those bright eyes of hers, but he hung on her every breath.

Belle’s free hand reached up, and his eyes closed, a sigh of longing escaping him as her fingers traced his cheek, cupping his face to hold him still. She leaned up, and then her soft, warm mouth was on his, and Gold forgot how to breathe. She kissed him only once, gently, and it was instinct that lead him to kiss her back, his hand fluttering to land on her waist, holding her closer as he deepened their kiss. He felt her tongue tease at the seam of his lips, and he opened his mouth to her, shuddering when her tongue touched his. Her hand slipped higher, carding through his hair as he hauled her closer, pressing her soft body against his, their hands trapped on his cane, wedged between them.

Finally, she pulled back, and like a fool he leaned forward, chasing her mouth. Her eyes searched his as he blearily looked down at her, dazed and convinced he must be dreaming. 

“Can I come inside?” she asked, glancing over his shoulder at his bedroom behind him. Gold swallowed hard at the implication, the desire in her eyes, her pupils blown and her cheeks flushed red. He couldn’t find words or breath to answer. He couldn’t find a good reason to deny her: Belle French in his bed, kissing him, her sweet petal-red lips against his, her soft little body writhing beneath him  as he brought her pleasure again and again, worshipping her as she deserved, tasting every inch of her until she begged for more or for respite… it was all he had dreamed about for weeks. 

It was a mistake: Gold knew that. But he’d always been a man who made bad decisions, and he couldn’t resist the chance to have all his dreams come true, just once, just for one night.

So he leaned down and kissed her again, with far more passion and force than before. He wrapped his free arm around her waist, and pulled her inside. He closed the door behind them.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this fic is getting long, and now apparently is in full on non-chronological order. So this follows directly on from chapter 2, and then chapter 1 follows on from this. Whatever, enjoy your 5,000 words of porn!

Belle didn’t know what had come over her.

She was drunk – oh, god was she drunk – but he was… he was him. And there didn’t seem like there was a good reason anymore not to do this. He wanted her. She’d known that since the moment he kissed her back, his hot strong hands on her waist and his little sigh against her mouth, as if he was craving something badly. As if he was craving her.

Had she been worried he wouldn’t want her? Clearly that had been a stupid worry to have. He had her pressed against him, breasts crushed against his hard chest, and his fingers had tangled in her hair at the base of her skull, tipping her back to hold her in place as he kissed her. Belle couldn’t understand how this man was both divorced and recently dumped. No one who kissed like this, all tenderness and passion, his lips teasing hers and his tongue exploring with a thoroughness that made her knees week, should ever be single.

Her back hit the closed door with a soft thump. His hand in her hair shielded her from any impact, and Belle moaned as he was suddenly between her legs – had she spread them? It was possible, and if she hadn’t she’d meant to – and something hard and very, very interested in the proceedings was pressed to her core. It felt incredible to have him there, and she was glad she was drunk because Sober Belle would have been terribly embarrassed by how wet and desperate a few kisses had made her.

Kisses from him, she reminded herself: from the literal man of her dreams. She’d been in two long-term relationships since she had met him, and even despite how happy and comfortable she’d been with both Ariel and Will, her filthiest fantasies were still about Mr Gold. Those relationships had ended naturally, healthily, as relationships will. Her crush on Gold had only gotten deeper over time.

And now he was kissing her. And the hand not fisted in her hair – with just a little delicious bite of pain, both numbed and heightened by the whiskey in her system – was sliding up her bare thigh, encouraging her to hold her legs around his waist. 

His soft hair was so warm and silky between her fingers, and she clung on for dear life. His mouth moved from hers and she gasped, his kisses moving across her cheek, down her jaw and her neck, biting at the soft skin between throat and shoulder. Belle shuddered from head to toe as he kissed and bit and sucked at every bit of skin he could find. She needed him to keep kissing her. She needed him to take off her dress, and his pyjamas, and hold her so close she couldn’t tell where he ended and she began. She needed him to touch her, all over, to kiss and caress and stoke and break the fires he set in her. She needed him inside her, his cock filling her up, making her whole, making her see stars…

“Ow!” his sharp cry broke him away from her mouth, and she stumbled to her feet as he wobbled. She caught him, instinctively, thankful she was barefoot and not wearing her usual heels. In her current state, had that been the case she knew they’d both have toppled over. 

“I’m sorry,” he panted, and she hated how sad he suddenly sounded. Why should he be sad? If he was hurt then she would fix it. He deserved someone to kiss his wounds better, to hold him and make things good again.

“You’re so sad,” she murmured, cupping his face in her hand. He looked at her with a look of anger and confusion, but she knew the former was nothing to do with her. It was his ankle, she realised, belatedly. He’d tried to bear both their weight on the door, and had hurt himself. Poor sweetheart, she thought, her heart clenching with love for him. “My poor Mr Gold.”

“You’re drunk,” he sighed, like he had before. 

It was a pointless observation, because so what if she was drunk? Drunk Belle was just Sober Belle but braver, and with less of a filter.

She wanted to be with him. She wanted to know what it would be like, to be with him. Just by smiling at her, talking to her, being his wonderful self with her, he had captured her heart. He made her feel things no one she’d ever been with before made her feel. She felt more alive, closer to the surface of her skin, more real and brighter and safer and more afraid than she’d ever been, all at once.

Belle smiled at him, and remembered a quote a professor of hers had always been enamoured with, “Yes, but tomorrow I shall be sober, and you, sir, will still be sad.”

He stared at her for a moment, as if he couldn’t quite understand what she’d said. Then he snorted through his nose, with that helpless, surprised smile he wore when she caught his hard face off guard. It was such a beautiful smile. She wanted to kiss him again, but she was worried about his ankle.

“You have to appreciate a woman who can paraphrase Churchill even while drunk,” he muttered. Belle knew a compliment when she heard one.

“You were doing a great job appreciating me just then,” she reminded him. She wished she hadn’t. His face creased with guilt and misery again, and he shook his head.

“You should go back to your room,” he muttered. “Leave a crippled old man to sleep.”

“You don’t want me to,” Belle told him, without a doubt in her mind. He had straightened, braced himself on the wall, and she took his other hand in both of hers. She stepped back, once, twice, toward the bed. He followed, limping and grabbing the footboard the moment he could to steady himself. He looked so lost, his dark eyes wide and wrecked and still so very, very sad. “I want to make you happy,” she told him, and meant every word from the bottom of her heart. “You deserve to be happy.”

“The fact you’re still here proves otherwise,” he replied. She shook her head, and giggled through her nose.

“Or maybe it proves the universe owes you one,” she argued back. “I’m right here, Mr Gold.” She stepped back, leaving him leaning on his bed, watching her with that shattered expression. Her head was spinning a little, but he was a point of steady clarity in a blurry world, and all she wanted was to ease the lines in his face. It was all she’d wanted for weeks now. Since the moment she’d come to stay with them, she’d lived to make him smile.

“Look,” she invited, giving her coyest smile and then bursting out laughing at her own attempt. Belle knew she wasn’t sexy. She was pretty, she wasn’t hard on the eyes, but she wasn’t like Ruby. She couldn’t make everyone in the room watch her as she walked by, and she’d never mastered the art of bedroom eyes. 

“Something funny, dear?” he asked, confused. She shook her head.

Belle sobered herself – although she wasn’t sober, not one bit, thankyouverymuch – and reached around to her dress’s zipper, hidden under her arm. She tugged it down, slowly, trying to remember from movies or Ariel’s handful of attempts how to do a striptease. That probably worked better when one didn’t have to then get the dress off over one’s head, in retrospect.

She pulled it off as sexily as she could, and dropped it to the floor. She looked back at Gold, and the whole endeavour was worth it for the look on his face. His mouth was slack, his pupils blown as his eyes raked over her.

“You… you should really go,” he stammered, but she could tell it was a token resistance now, forced through unhappy lips. “This isn’t right.”

“Do you want me, Mr Gold?” she asked him point blank. She knew he did. His pyjama pants hid nothing, and her lips were still swollen from his kisses, her neck covered in his bites and little marks. She ran a hand from her jaw to her breast, over some of those love-bites. “I think you do,” she said. “I think you want me as much as I want you. I think it would make you happy. You deserve to be happy.”

“I…” he stammered and clamped his mouth shut, his gaze still wavering between maintaining eye contact and running hungrily over her body. She shivered at the heat in his eyes.

“Do you want me?” she asked again, and reached behind her, to undo her bra. She was stunned when he held up a hand to stop her, and her heart sank. He’d talked himself out of it, she thought: she’d have to make do with the memory of his kisses, and the vibrator she had hidden in her sock drawer.

“No, wait,” he begged, and she nodded, stopping. “Let… let me?”

Belle felt herself flush all over, and she beamed, nodding. “Please,” she said, spreading her arms to give him better access. “Please.”

He nodded, and reached out a hand for her. He tangled his fingers with hers, and tugged her closer, until they were pressed together again, a hairsbreadth of space between her body and his.

“I do,” he said, shakily, his tone at odds with his quick, sure fingers behind her, undoing her bra easier than she ever had. “I do want you, Belle. I just shouldn’t.”

“Shhh,” she breathed, and pressed a finger to his lips. He kissed her fingertip, and somehow it was the most erotic, romantic moment of Belle’s life. She shivered all over, her eyes fluttering closed. “You’re allowed to want me, Mr Gold. I want you too.”

Her fingertip traced his lips, and he drew it into his mouth, gently nipping at the pad. Belle drew it back slowly, and moved it back to cup his cheek again.

“Abraham,” he corrected her, softly. She’d known his forename, of course, but she’d never used it, nor heard anyone else do so. The only person who didn’t call him ‘Mr Gold’ or just ‘Gold’ was his son, and Neal called him ‘papa’ or ‘dad’ depending on the day. It felt like a rare and beautiful thing, to be trusted with his name. “Please.”

“Abraham,” she agreed. She didn’t miss how he groaned and shivered at the sound of his name on her lips.

She stepped back just a little, breaking their contact so her bra could fall down her shoulders and off, onto the floor. His eyes immediately fell to her breasts, her nipples already hardened, all but begging to be touched. He swallowed hard, forcing his gaze back up to meet hers.

“See anything you like?” she teased. He didn’t reply. His shaking hand came out to grasp her shoulder and he tugged her closer, his mouth crushing against hers.

Belle moaned, melting into his arms as he sat down hard on the bed, pulling her with him. He rolled them over so that she was pinned beneath him, his hands now free to roam over her body as he saw fit. Belle tangled her fingers back in his hair – god, it was so soft, so wonderful to touch and play with, and the noises he made when she scratched his scalp made her shiver – as she felt Gold cup one of her breasts in his hand, a callous on his thumb rubbing hard against her nipple. The sensation send ripples through her, and she moaned and wriggled, pushing her breast closer into his hand.

He smiled at her reaction; she could feel his lips curve against her neck.

“You’re wearing too many clothes,” she gasped, the last word broken into a harsh cry when he pinched both of her nipples hard, at the same time, ignoring what she’d said entirely. “Ah!”

He moved backward, kissing down her body. He suckled one nipple while teasing the other, and Belle whimpered and writhed, desperate for more, for pressure on her dripping cunt, for anything he would give her.

He nipped at her stomach as he moved further down still, easing himself to kneel on the floor between her knees. He tugged her hips to the edge of the bed, and it was only when Belle felt her knickers being rolled down her legs and tossed to one side that she realised what was about to happen. Apparently now Gold had surrendered to what they both wanted, he was going to do it right. His gentle, firm hands stroked her thighs, and he kissed the side of her right knee as he encouraged her to rest it on his shoulder, before doing the same to the other. She shuddered at the tenderness of that action, at the caress of his hands and the anticipation of what would come next.

It had been a very long time since someone had done this for her. After she and Ariel broke up, Belle had had a dry spell for a good few months before she’d hooked up with Will, and while Will had had plenty of redeeming features, he hadn’t been fond of oral sex. Not giving it, anyway. In fact, Belle had never had a male partner who offered without being asked, bargained with, and done so under promise of something major in return.

Gold still had his clothes on, and she hadn’t even touched his cock. And yet, when she sat up on her forearms to look down at him, his eyes were fixed between her legs, dark and deep and ravenous.

He looked up and met her eyes, and held her gaze as he leaned in and pressed a hot, soft kiss to her soaked lips. His tongue teased between her folds as his lips stroked her, and Belle cried out, falling back on the bed and bucking her hips against him. He kissed her cunt the way he’d kissed her mouth: tenderly, firmly, with a passion that fuelled rather than ruined his thorough attention to detail. He kissed the way he dressed, the way he spoke, the way he worked: with an intense, impeccable attention to the finest detail, intent on getting it right.

It was one of the things that she’d first found attractive about him, that singular focus, that dedication to the detail of things. Now, he applied it to his lips, teeth and tongue between her legs, and Belle was moaning and gasping, seeing stars. He mapped every reaction, learning in moments the best way to make her thighs clench around his head, her fingers clawing at his head. He licked and lapped and sucked like a starving man, and Belle was spiralling up and up, gasping a string of pleas and praise, coiled tight as a bowstring. He scraped his teeth against her clit; she came with sparks behind her eyes, her whole body tensing, grinding her cunt against his mouth.

He kept at it as she came down, easing her through the aftershocks as she twitched and moaned. She expected him to stop, then, to crawl back up onto the bed for his reward. She gasped in surprise when he only redoubled his efforts, adding another finger inside her and increasing the depth and speed of his thrusts. 

Belle cried out, and only then remembered that Neal was trying to sleep. She covered her mouth with her own hand, and tried to stifle the yelps and whimpers that escaped her as Gold worked over and over her hyper-sensitive flesh. He scraped his teeth over her clit, sucked at it, removed his fingers and fucked her with his tongue, anything and everything he could think of to bring her pleasure. He succeeded in teasing two more shattering orgasms from her, bucking and moaning on the bed, before she finally had to wrench his head back and plead for respite.

He smiled up at her, a cockier, lazier grin than she’d ever seen from him, lips shiny from her juices. She didn’t know how she could possibly still need him after that, but she did. She needed him inside her, as close to her as a person could be.

She sat up straight, her arms shaking, lassitude sinking in from the pleasure he’d given her. She held out her arms to him, and he stepped into them, hugging her head against his chest as she wrapped her arms around his waist. He smelled like fabric softener, and musk, toothpaste and warm clean skin. She breathed him in, and felt her whole body melt against him. It was a stark counterpoint to the eroticism of just a moment ago. He held her close like he needed her, and she heard him sigh against her hair.

Something was digging into Belle’s sternum. She grinned up at him, her hands now on his waistband, and felt him falter as she blew gently against his cock through his pyjama pants. “Your turn,” she whispered. He shook his head.

“You wanted this,” he reminded her. “So let me take care of you, sweetheart.”

“But I want to do this for you,” she argued, cupping him through his pants, making his hips jerk and his eyes slam shut. “Please, Abraham?”

“I’m already taking more than I should,” he groaned, shaking his head. “And I won’t last.”

He looked down at her, and cupped her face in both hands. For a moment he just gazed down at her, as if he couldn’t believe she was real, as if he were trying to memorise her face. She wished she were sober, so she could do the same. He looked at her like she was something precious, and it warmed her to her toes. Her hand released his cock, and fell to her side.

“Please, Abraham,” she said again, and this time she couldn’t say what she was pleading for. She needed him to kiss her, to touch her, to hold her. He’d already given her more pleasure in one go than she’d ever had before, but it wasn’t enough. She didn’t just want to orgasm: she wanted him.

He nodded when she tugged at his pants again, granting permission. He looked as if he regretted it the moment he did so, and she noticed he made no moves to remove his shirt. She was sobering up, and she wondered if he was self-conscious. She could imagine a man of his age might well be, although he had nothing to worry about in that department. His cock must be aching, she realised when she chanced a glance down at it, purple-red at the tip and iron hard. It looked like just the right size, satisfying without being painful. Belle knew all about the latter: her first boyfriend, George, was six-three and hung like a horse. Her first time had felt like being split in two.

“Need a condom first,” he said, and she nodded: she would have forgotten, and the thought worried her a little. The alcohol was still making it hard to think clearly. All she knew was that she wanted him, now and for as long as possible, in every way.

He stepped away for a moment, and reached into his bedside table, pulling out a foil packet a moment later. Belle plucked it from his fingers, and grinned at him teasingly as he watched with dark, desperate eyes.

“I could put it on with my mouth, you know,” she said, with a lazy grin. Gold’s eyes widened.

“I really don’t think I’d last, sweetheart,” he apologised. “I… I don’t want to disappoint you.”

She thought about that with a small frown. “You couldn’t disappoint me,” she told him. “You’re you. I don’t think that’s possible.”

He blinked at her, and she knew he didn’t understand what she meant. She shrugged, another thought occurring and causing a laugh to bubble from her lips. “And the last time I tried it, I almost bit my boyfriend’s dick off, so maybe not the best idea.”

“Oh Lord,” Gold’s eyes widened with horror. “I hope… is that a current relationship?”

“Ex-boyfriend,” Belle clarified. “Broke up a few months before graduation, I think in part because of the penis-biting. Will didn’t enjoy spending a night with an ice-pack to the groin.”

“No, I’d imagine not,” Gold mused, looking a little concerned.

“He found himself a girl who doesn’t bite his penis,” Belle continued, realising as she did that her filter had apparently collapsed under a tide of whiskey, and she was revealing things she really wouldn’t if she were sober. “She’s all tall and blonde and English. She wears a lot of red, and doesn’t make him spend whole days in bookstores.”

“She sounds like a bore,” Gold commented. “And he’s a fool if he thinks he can improve on perfection.”

Belle’s eyes glistened a little, as Gold’s hand pushed back her hair and cupped her cheek. His thumb brushed gently over her lower lip, and for a moment she held his gaze, and she could almost swear there was something deeper, softer and warmer in his eyes than lust. But she was drunk, and drunk people tended to see what they wanted to see.

“I’ll just use my hand, then,” she said, after a long moment had passed. He swallowed and nodded,

She expertly applied the condom, covering his heavy, hard member in the shiny latex. She felt him tense, heard him sigh and groan as her hand ghosted over it. She couldn’t help placing a single kiss to the head as she pulled back, and heard a whimper escape his lips. She could hardly believe the reaction he had to everything she did, how easy it was to wreck him with a single brush of her hand. At least it seemed she had an equal effect on him as he did on her.

Belle looked back up at Gold’s worried face, and smiled encouragingly. She ran her hands up under his shirt, spreading her palms over his soft stomach and up, over the sparse hair of his chest. “Please?”

He still looked doubtful, and she was sure when he leaned down to kiss her he was at least partially hoping to distract her. It worked: his hands returned to her breasts, kneading them gently until she moaned against his mouth. He braced one knee on the bed, and encouraged her to wriggle back, until they were under the covers, with her head on the pillows and his body braced over her. It was warmer here, cocooned with the sheets and Gold’s body, and Belle stretched and wriggled. His cock brushed her folds, and they both froze. Belle felt herself clench around nothing, and hoped he’d get inside her soon, before she combusted from anticipation. 

She tried to get his shirt off again, desperate to feel skin against skin, but he pinned her hands over her head. “There’s no need,” he told her.

“I’m naked,” she pointed out. “Tit for tat.” She pointed to her breasts, and sniggered at her own pun. She caught him off guard, for just a moment, and he gave a helpless little chuckle. He finally let her drag his t-shirt up over his head, and he was the one to throw it aside, to join the rest of their clothes on the bedroom floor.

“Much better,” she breathed, hungrily running her eyes over his lean torso.

“Nothing to look at,” he muttered, grimacing, and she wondered then what those other women had said to him to make him so uncomfortable with his body.

“You’re gorgeous,” she told him, leaning up to kiss his uncertain, unhappy face.

“The beer-goggles have really set in then?” he quirked an eyebrow. She bit his lower lip to punish him. He growled low in his throat, and kissed her again, deep and harsh and a little messy, like he wanted to eat her alive. She could still taste herself on his mouth, and it sent her head spinning.

His clever fingers found their way between her legs, and stroked and teased at her, at nerves already over-stimulated from his previous onslaught. His thumb rested on her clit as three fingers entered her, and he sucked on her nipples and fucked her on his hand as she whimpered. “Come on, sweetheart,” he murmured against her skin. “Come for me again.”

Belle didn’t know how he did it, but she came again, her body clenching on his fingers, hips jerking against his. Pleasure swept through her, made her soft and dizzy, pliant against him. He withdrew his sticky fingers, and sucked her off of them while she watched. She needed him inside her more than she needed her next breath.

His hard cock was pushing between her legs, slipping and sliding along swollen, oversensitive folds, and she moaned into his mouth, wrapping her hips around his waist.

“Just fuck me, Abraham,” she hissed, “please, god, please…”

He nodded, his nose bumping hers, and reached down gracelessly to line them up. Belle groaned against Gold’s lips, a long, low sound of satisfaction as that perfectly sized cock of his filled her.

“That’s right, there we go,” he murmured into her hair. “Is this alright?”

“That’s amazing,” she panted, “So good, so… aahhh,” he pulled back and thrust back in again, as slow and deep as the last time, setting up a rhythm that felt like the tide and built her back up, and up. His thumb snaked between them, that callous that had worked wonders on her breast now applied to her clit, and she ground down on him, meeting him thrust for thrust, creating a friction that sent her head spinning. She arched her neck, thrashing and whimpering, and he kissed her to quiet her, stroking her tongue with his in a rhythm that matched his cock filling her cunt.

A moment later, in a second of startling ecstasy, Belle came again, her back arching suddenly off the bed as her channel clenched and tightened around him. The pleasure shot and sparked through her, a sharp electric thing that left her winded and breathless, jerking with pleasure. She felt him grit his teeth against her neck, trying to hold on, trying to keep going. “It’s okay,” she panted, as she stroked his back, “Come for me, Abraham, please.”

He groaned, and buried his lips in her throat as he came, his body trembling and shaking as he thrust hard once, twice, his cock pulsing inside her as he finished into the condom.

For a long moment, he lay there on top of her, sweaty and breathing hard into her neck. Belle felt sleep swelling up to take her, the drink making it hard to keep it at bay. She stroked his hair and down his spine, and moaned in protest when he moved to get rid of the condom. By the time the mattress depressed beside her again and he was back, she was already slipping into sleep, the darkness claiming her as he clicked off the bedside light.

She cuddled in close instinctively when his arm wrapped around her middle. Belle fell asleep to the soft sighing of his breath against her neck, and the beat of his heart to her ribcage, in perfect time with hers.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is really just happening when people prompt me now, but I have an idea of where it's going! Enjoy some Swanfire commiserating.

“Come on, pick up, pick up!” Neal muttered under his breath as he marched down the street toward the centre of town, his phone ringing and ringing as he tried desperately to get hold of Emma.

“Hey, Neal?” Emma’s voice came through at last, and Neal sighed with relief. “What’s up?”

“My dad had sex with Belle.”

Emma was silent. Neal stopped in his tracks, the whole situation feeling horrifically real now he’d said it aloud. Belle and his dad had had sex. The noises in the night, which he’d blamed on the wind or the neighbours, were Belle having sex with his dad. He couldn’t get the image of them out of his mind, and he wondered whether his stomach rolling with nausea was a reaction to that, the quart of whiskey he’d downed the night before, or a combination.

“Neal?” Emma’s voice was worried. “Could you repeat that? You can’t have said what I thought you said.”

“I walked in on them,” he said, the taste of it bitter in the back of his mouth. “My dad and Belle had sex.”

“You walked in on them?” Emma cried with horror. Neal checked himself.

“Well, the immediate aftermath,” he corrected. “She was hiding in the bathroom.”

“What’d they say about that?” Emma snorted. Neal had a horrible feeling she found it funny.

“Papa claimed she was just using his shower, which was why she had her clothes on his floor.”

“So? Maybe she was?” Emma suggested. Neal shook his head.

“Emma, his clothes were on the floor too. And he was sleeping naked… or at least shirtless, thank God I can’t confirm the rest. And also, you and I have taken enough sponge baths - does your hair look the same after sticking it under the faucet as after a shower?”

“No,” she agreed, sighing. “You’re right.”

“My dad’s the tidiest person I know,” he continued. “I’ve never known him to leave anything on the floor that doesn’t belong there.”

“Yeah and he’s the least naked person ever,” Emma agreed. “I mean I don’t think I’ve ever met him in anything less than a full three-piece suit.”

“Exactly,” he said. “And I… heard things last night.”

“Oh ew!” Emma cried, and this time he was sure she found it funny. “That’s so gross! Your dad?”

“And my best friend,” he reminded her. “Belle, who I think of like a sister, who I invited into my home. Belle had sex with my dad.”

“Well he is kind of a silver fox,” Emma teased. Neal made a noise of pure betrayal, momentarily lost for words.

“Don’t say that!” he cried. “I’m never gonna get that image out of my head!”

“Well, Neal, parents have sex sometimes,” she reminded him. “I mean, if you knew how many times I’ve walked in on my parents over the years…”

“Your parents have been married for like thirty years!” Neal objected. Emma snorted.

“Right because you’re so against pre-marital sex,” she said, sarcasticlaly. “Which is why I’m currently on the Pill.”

“It’s different,” he snapped, stubbornly. “It’s Belle.”

“Yeah that’s kind of weird,” Emma agreed. “I mean, she’s so… nice and normal. Definitely doesn’t give off a ‘has sex with her friend’s dad’ vibe.”

“What if this wasn’t the first time?” he continued, miserably, as he rounded Peach Lane onto Maple, three blocks from Main Street. “What if she came up here so that she could… so they could…?”

“That’d be a huge betrayal of trust,” Emma agreed. “That’d suck. I’m sorry, Neal, this must be horrible for you.”

“I just… I trusted them,” he said. “And they lied to me!”

“Okay that you can’t be mad about,” she replied, firmly. “Remember that time in the back of your car after graduation? When you convinced him I’d just lost my contact lens?”

“Kids can lie to parents about sex, parents aren’t supposed to lie to their kids.”

“That’s one hell of a double standard,” Emma scoffed. “Come on, Neal. They panicked and they knew you’d be mad. Anyone would lie under those circumstances.”

“I guess,” he muttered. “I just… he’s too old for her. She’s too young for him.”

“They’re consenting adults,” Emma reminded him. “At least… I mean, he wouldn’t have-”

“No,” Neal cut her off. “No, I… I can’t imagine him ever forcing anyone. I’d never speak to him again if he did but… no. And if he did pressure her, Belle wouldn’t fall for it. She’d come tell me, like she did when that Keith guy tried to shame her into sleeping with him after she broke up with Ariel. She can handle herself, and… I don’t think papa’s like that.”

“Well, assuming it’s not something sinister like that, what are you gonna do about it?” Emma asked. “You gonna kick her out? Call them out on it?”

“I don’t know,” Neal admitted, stopping to lean back against a wall, not wanting to talk about this where people might hear him. “I don’t know.”

“Would it… would it be so bad?” Emma asked, tentatively. “You think of her like family already, right?”

Neal shuddered all over, “Like a sister,” he corrected. “Not a… not a stepmother.”

“Well, on the list of bad shit parents can do, consensual sex with a younger woman isn’t really that high on the list,” Emma pointed out. “I mean, my parents abandoned me on the side of a road when I was born.”

“Okay, but they had a good reason,” Neal argued. “There was a car accident, your dad was in a coma and your mom thought you were dead. It's a bit different.”

“I know, but still,” Emma replied. “Parents make mistakes, things happen. Your dad loves you, Neal. I’m sure if you asked him not to speak to her anymore, he would.”

“She doesn’t have anywhere else to go right now,” he replied. “She’s looking for a job up here. Oh god, what if they hire her? What if I move away and she’s here with my dad and... and...”

“And someone gets a new step-mommy?” Emma finished for him. “I think you’re overreacting a little bit here. As far as we know it was one night. One drunken one night stand does not a relationship make."

“I guess...”

“And you’re always saying how great Belle is, and how worried you are about leaving your dad all alone,” she reminded him. “I get that it’s super gross, I really do, but this might be a time to try and act like a grown-up.”

“You’re one to talk,” he grumbled. “No one who eats pop tarts for dinner can talk about maturity.”

“I’m just saying you need to talk to them,” she said. “Make sure this is what you think it is. Then you can decide if the foot-stomping and door-slamming is appropriate.”

“What if I want to slam doors and feel betrayed that apparently Belle’s decided if her dad’s an asshole she’ll just have mine?” he asked, his voice coming hard and bitter, finally giving voice to the cold, coiled snake in his gut. He was about to leave town. He didn’t want to come back and find a whole little family had grown up without him, Belle taking his place as his father’s favourite person. He’d always relied, somewhere deep down and vital, on his father’s unshakable devotion to him. The idea of losing that was unthinkable.

“Wow that was a shitty thing to say,” Emma gave a low whistle of astonishment. “That... damn, Neal.”

“I said what I said,” he muttered. He heard Emma sigh.

“So you’re worried he’s trying to replace the Neal-shaped hole in his life, and she’s using him because of her daddy issues?” she summarised. “And you’re covering that in a smooth, creamy coating of weird jealousy?”

“Did you have to make it sound like a candy bar?” he complained. She laughed.

“You mentioned pop tarts, now I’m hungry,” she replied. “Look, I’m not gonna lecture anyone about weird parental feelings, because God knows I gave my mom enough shit when I finally found her. I’m here for you if you need me.”

“I do need you,” he said. “I really do.”

“Well, you know I’m just chilling with my parents for the next few weeks. I could use some of that to come up and see you? Maybe it’d be easier with two of us. And, y’know, maybe they’ll behave themselves if they have to double-worry about getting caught.”

“I don’t want to drag you away from them,” he sighed. He sank down against the wall, coming to sit on the floor. It felt safe here, in the morning sun, far away from fathers and best friends and their betrayals.

“You’re coming to live here specifically so we can be near them,” Emma reminded him. “So you’re good, babe. Give me a day to sort some shit out, and I’ll be on the first flight up.”

Neal sighed, long and low, crumpling in on himself. Now the anger and disbelief had worn down a little, he just felt sick, tired, and lonely. “Thanks, Emma.”

“Any time,” she promised. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“And don’t do anything dumb until I get there, okay?” she warned. “Doing dumb things together is our thing, you gotta save the stupid until I can join in.”

That dragged a laugh out of him, and he nodded. “Okay, deal.”


	5. Chapter 5

Belle was off-limits.

Gold squeezed his eyes shut, and tried to sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, however, the image of Belle’s pale skin luminous in the lamplight, her eyes gleaming, her soft thighs parting to welcome him, shone in his imagination clear as day.

Any other woman, he would have been grovelling at her feet for another chance to touch her. He’d be planning dinner dates and panicking over conversation. He’d be hoping to hear her soft knock at his door again. He would have done his best, however incompetent, to keep her as long as he could.

But not Belle: Belle was off-limits.

She always had been, of course. She was twenty-three, his son’s best friend, only just out of college and trusting him to provide her a roof over her head for the summer. He was supposed to be feeling paternal toward her, seeing her like a daughter the way Neal saw her as a sister. He was supposed to be the sort of man who could be trusted around young women.

He’d proven that trust foolish just two nights ago, and again the following morning. After they’d both dressed and Neal had retuned from Granny’s, he’d had a moment to really think about what he’d done. The sight of the two of them, his beloved son with his best friend, laughing like children while playing on Neal’s Xbox, had filled him with guilt. Neal would hate him, if he ever found out. He sure as hell would never come home, nor bring any grandchildren to visit with their grandpa. He’d finally see the monster everyone else did, and he’d be right to turn his back in disgust.

To make matters worse, to compound his guilt, Neal had cheerily announced that Emma would be coming to stay for a week or two, to help him to pack up his things for the move to Florida. Neal not only trusted him around his beautiful best friend, but also around his pretty young girlfriend.

Not that Gold harboured any latent attraction or feeling for young Emma. No, Gold was positive that even should Emma make the exact same advances Belle had – and poor chance of that, considering the two women were chalk and cheese in almost every respect – he would have no trouble doing as he should have done with Belle, and sending her to bed with a glass of water and some aspirin for the morning.

Emma was tough as nails, bright and forthright, independent almost to a fault and serious, almost severe when caught wrong. She only lightened and softened around Neal. Neal, it seemed, was capable of bringing out the sweet young woman behind that hard shell. She was a good person, a welcome addition to their little family, but she wasn’t _Belle_.

Gold’s whole body was a mess of self-loathing and desire, guilt and longing. He was becoming exactly the dirty old man his father had been, and he felt sick to his stomach with it.

Finally, he rose from the bed, and pulled on his slippers and robe. He’d go down and get himself a cup of chamomile tea (or perhaps a stiff drink, he’d see when he got there) and see if chemicals could do what willpower could not.

The light was on when he looked down the stairs. Emma was a light sleeper, Neal had told him: a childhood in the foster-care system and an adolescence living out of a car had made it hard for her to relax. She had some academy exams coming up, so when Gold entered his kitchen he expected to see a lean, blonde figure hunched over a book, furiously muttering the _Miranda_ rights over and over again.

Instead, he saw a vision.

Belle was sat cross-legged on his counter in the world’s tiniest shorts and vest, a bowl of cereal in her lap and a book perched on her knee. Her hair was piled in a messy bun on top of her head, one curl escaping to brush her cheek. What struck him most were her feet, her tiny dainty feet, neatly tucked away under her knees. She was so small, was Belle, and yet anything but fragile.

He couldn’t help himself: for a moment on the threshold of his kitchen, he allowed himself to admire her.

“Comfortable?” he asked, when he could justify his staring no longer. He came around the counter, toward the liquor cabinet. She jumped, and looked up at him in surprise.

“Oh, Ab- Mr Gold!” she cried, flustered. “What’re you doing up?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” he said, shortly. He didn’t add ‘ _because I can’t stop thinking about making love to you again_ ’, because it couldn’t _happen_ again. Telling her he wanted her would set them back to square one.

“Oh,” a little concerned crease appeared between her eyebrows, and it touched his heart. She cared for his wellbeing; with that heart of gold she wore on her sleeve. He couldn’t imagine what he could have done to deserve it. “Me neither,” she admitted.

“Bed not comfortable?” he asked. She shrugged; he was lost the moment her smile turned mischievous.

“I’ve slept in better,” she replied. She looked up at him, her eyes dancing.

He swallowed hard around a dry throat. He needed to go, now, before he let the little minx seduce him again. Before he let them do something they’d both regret in the end. She was twenty-three, an adult by any measure, but he was still the grown-up here by her age again and plus change. It was his responsibility to put a stop to it.

He shouldn’t meet her eyes, and engage with her. He should be firm, upfront, tell her it was a mistake, that it was inappropriate, that he could be her father. He shouldn’t take up her little game.

But her little feet were tucked under her knees, and her hair was a thick, soft mass on top of her head, and her smile was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. It was far harder than it should have been, under such circumstances, to remember how close they’d come to destroying everything, only a few days ago.

He should be curt, he thought. He should grunt, or ignore her, or suggest a better comforter. He should ignore the blatant innuendo in her voice, and steer them back to safe ground.

But Gold had always been a man who made wrong choices, and he couldn’t fight the habit of a lifetime.

“Have you now?” he returned, a small smile lifting one corner of his mouth.

She looked delighted, her whole face lighting up, like a spark turned to a flame. “Yep.” She popped the ‘p’, smacking her lips, and met his eyes in a clear challenge.

“And what’s wrong with the bed provided?” he asked, knowing he was flirting with danger, that he was stepping on cracks and walking under ladders, making every bad decision and knowing it led to a bad outcome.

He didn’t care. She was beautiful, and bright like the sun, a star stolen from the sky and hidden away in his kitchen. She had the most brilliant mind he’d ever met, a sweet yet sharp sense of humour, and a heart full of love and understanding. He couldn’t resist her any more than the tide can resist the moon.

“It’s cold,” she said, and he stepped closer to hear her better, close to the countertop. She hadn’t flirted like this in the day, but it was past the witching hour and silent, and it felt as if anything that happened now would be wiped clean tomorrow with the dawn. “Empty,” her hand had reached out, and somehow he was close enough to play with the edge of his robe. “It doesn’t have you in it.”

His breath caught. “Belle we… we can’t,” he shook his head, and stepped away. She let him go, but her brow furrowed.

“Why, because of Neal?”

“He’d never forgive us,” he shook his head. “I can’t… I can’t risk losing him.”

“Neal loves you,” she said, softly, her eyes imploring. “Look, me and my dad, we’re not close. The amount of things I’ve never told him or been able to talk to him about could fill this house. He’d go ballistic if the word ‘bisexual’ were ever used to describe me, for example. But Neal… Neal worships the ground you walk on. He doesn’t say it but he knows how lucky he is he has a dad who really cares, a dad he can come to when he needs anything at all. He’s not dumb enough to throw that away on some petty prejudice.”

“Is that what this is, then?” he asked, a slice of bitterness twisting in his gut. “Some… misplaced bid to replace an absent father?”

Belle looked as if he’d slapped her. Gold wanted to wrench the words out of the air the moment he’d said them.

“I don’t know,” she snapped back. “Are you looking for a daughter you can also fuck? Is this leading up to you asking me to call you ‘Daddy’?”

He winced. The guilt and remorse tightened in his gut. “No,” he said. “No, Belle, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I… I don’t think of you that way. But I should… I should remember your youth. I should consider you chastely, as a daughter. But I never have. From the moment we met it was… it was something else entirely. But that doesn’t make it right.”

She seemed a little mollified by his confession, involuntary and foolish as it was. “Then believe me when I say that when I look at you, my father’s a thousand miles from my mind.”

He nodded: he had no choice but to believe her. Her hot anger, her instant denial, had soothed a worry he hadn’t even realised he’d had. He didn’t want to hurt her, and he knew better than most how easy it was to find someone to fill the aching space in a heart, only to have been wrong all along.

“I… I don’t regret it, you know,” she said, tentatively. Her whole body had softened again, and she picked up her cereal from her lap and placed it far to the side. She swung her legs down to hang a clear foot off the ground, feet kicking between them. “What we did, I mean. I wanted to, and it was amazing, and I think you feel the same way. Neither of us was cheating, or lying, or made promises we didn’t intend to keep. Do you trust your son so little that you believe he’d hold a little happiness against you?”

“I think if it were happiness found with someone my own age, he’d find it easier to swallow than with his best friend,” he said. “He didn’t have a problem with that before, after all.”

He’d stepped closer again, ostensibly to lean his weight on the counter and not his cane. She was looking at him with those huge blue eyes, and she was at just the right height there to kiss her. He smothered that thought as soon as it came: it had no business here.

“Do you… do you have anyone your age you’d like to find happiness with?” she asked. “Like… like your ex, maybe?” He didn’t even have to think: he shook his head.

“No,” he admitted. “I don’t meet people easily, and people I’m… compatible with, far less so. Cora and I were not compatible.”

“Compatible,” she nodded, a small smile lighting her face. “That’s a good word. Can’t deny the compatibility.”

The air between them crackled and burned, and for a moment it was all Gold could do to remember how to breathe. Her eyes were huge, her lips parted on a soft sigh, her cheeks blooming and her breathing shallow. She looked desperate for a kiss, her gaze flicking from his eyes to his mouth and back again. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life. He’d stepped closer; he could feel her hot, quick breaths on his skin.

Gold tore his gaze from hers, and searched for a distraction, for something to say to break the electric tension.

“Oh, I think we can,” he snickered, catching sight of the book open on her lap. “ _Bridget Jones’s Diary_ , really? Didn’t we have a deal that you were to try _The Quiet American_?”

“It was like five pages long, I finished it this morning!” she protested. “You have an opinion to share?” she asked, a little haughtily. She took the book up in her hands, and slipped her bookmark between the pages, holding it close as if to shield it from his scorn.

“I’d have thought you the type to read Austen herself, not a knock-off, is all,” he sniffed. He might have been stepping up his nastiness a little, riling her up to make her eyes flash and cheeks flush, and to move them out of the odd, tense space they’d occupied, talking about what they were to one another. Books were a safe topic: something they had in common outside of a desire to rip one another’s clothes off.

“You’re thinking of the movie,” Belle corrected, patiently. “Rookie error. The books in my room must be for show, I guess, if you can’t tell the difference between a DVD starring Colin Firth, and a classic of modern literature.”

“ _Our Man in Havana_ is a modern classic,” he said, warming to his theme. “ _Lord of the Flies_ , _The Great Gatsby_ , _Brave New World_ , they’re all classics. The drunken ramblings of a middle-aged lush don’t fit that bill.”

He couldn’t tell if she was furious or turned on – perhaps both at the same time. “God, that’s such a masculine answer,” she sighed. “I suppose you’ve overlooked Atwood, despite how _A Handmaid’s Tale_ is at least as poignant now as Huxley? How about the fact that Zelda wrote at least half of Fitzgerald’s output, and had her personality and life story stolen and mocked for her trouble?”

“And Sylvia Plath stuck her head in the oven,” Gold nodded, smirking. “Yes, I understand.”

He looked at her in direct challenge, daring her to mount some spirited defence. For a moment, she looked ready and raring to respond, her colour high and her eyes bright. Then, without warning, her eyes softened and her smile turned sly.

“You’re baiting me,” she said, delightedly. “I know you’re enjoying Nights at the Circus, I saw the bookmark two thirds of the way through.”

“It’s well-written,” he defended himself. “And the magical realism is intriguing.”

Her eyes narrowed, and he knew she’d seen right through him. “…You’ve read all of them, haven’t you?”

He sighed, caught out. “Alright, but I didn’t enjoy _The Bell Jar_ ,” he said. “I think one has to be a depressed woman in her twenties to connect with it.”

“Maybe,” Belle conceded. She was beaming at him, as if she’d caught his hand in the cookie jar. “You’d like Helen Fielding, too,” she added, holding up the much-maligned book clutched in her lap. “She’s funny, and she’s got that quick, pithy style you were selling me on with Graham Greene. More realistic than literary.”

“Hmm,” he pressed his lips in a thin line. “I believe one has to be a depressed woman in her thirties to understand the endless allure of Colin Firth,” he said.

“You don’t think happy, emotionally fulfilled younger women could possibly see the attraction in a handsome, well-educated older man?” she asked, all innocence.

“I don’t know,” he said. “If one happens by, be sure and let me know.”

She snorted through her nose, rolling her eyes. “You’re dense as a brick, you know that?”

“And you’re playing with fire, and begging to get burned,” he retorted. Her smile turned wicked, and her head tilted to one side, challenging him to follow his threat with action.

He made a tactical error. He looked away from her eyes and down, and found nothing but bare skin: shoulders, arms, clavicle, cleavage, thighs, knees, and those delicate little feet. She was so soft and pale, so small and fragile, and yet her slight frame hid a core of steel within. It was addictive.

In the dark of the midnight kitchen, that odd liminal space filled with quiet electronic hums and the over-brightness of ceiling lights, the world seemed to hold its breath. The night stretched on, and on ahead of him: sunrise seemed a lifetime away.

She shivered all over. He dragged his eyes away from her body, aware that his gaze was anything but innocent. “I couldn’t sleep,” she said again, low and tentative, “Because I couldn’t stop thinking about how you were only one room away from me.”

His breath caught. His hands reached out, almost of their own accord, and he almost took her by the waist but caught himself at the last moment, his hands coming to brace on the edge of the counter instead.

“Belle, I…” he didn’t know how to finish that sentence. He couldn’t lie, and claim not to want her. He couldn’t tell the truth, and confess to the desire he felt for her, whet rather than sated by their night together. He was caught in the in-between, no-mans-land, and damned either way.

Her eyes searched his, flicking back and forth. “Do you want me, Abraham?” she asked, softly, and the use of his forename in that breathless voice sent him spinning.

“Always,” he replied, the confession a release, freedom from the burden of hiding it, of lying and concealing it.

She made a little whimpering noise in the back of her throat, and then her hands were in his hair and she was hauling him close, crashing her mouth to his. For a moment, he was stunned senseless. Then his hands came to cup her face, so he could slant his mouth over hers and kiss her properly. She moaned as she opened for him, her tongue coming out to play with his. Her legs opened, and he felt her tug him closer with her calves around his hips, coiling herself around him, trapping him close.

Finally, his head spinning, Gold had to come up for air. He couldn’t bring himself to pull back, to put an inch of daylight between his body and hers, so instead he dragged his lips along her cheek, nipped at her earlobe, nibbled on her jaw, anything that would make her shake and whimper against him, anything to bring her pleasure. The sounds she made were addictive, and she was so very responsive, every touch seemed to set her alight.

“I couldn’t sleep for thinking about you,” he admitted in a rush, and felt her hands fist in his hair as she held on for dear life, holding his head to her neck as he lavished the smooth column with kisses and soft little bites. “Our night was the best night I can remember, all I could see when I closed my eyes was you.”

She sighed and moaned his name. Her busy fingers got to work on his robe, and he helped her by pulling away to shrug himself out of it, letting it fall in a heap on the floor. Going anywhere – even to the couch in the next room – would break the spell.

He kissed her again, his hands coming to the hem of her tank top so he could touch beneath. Her skin was soft and warm, and without the barrier of a bra her small breasts hung loose, free for him to cup and tease with his fingers. She broke their kiss with a gasp as he gently tugged her nipple, her hips canting against his. “Abraham, please,” she moaned.

“What do you need, sweetheart?” he asked, his voice almost unrecognisable to his own ears, low and gravelly with need.

She didn’t reply. Instead, her hands went to her waist, and she began to shimmy off her little shorts, wriggling them down her thighs, gasping when the hot skin of her arse met the cool marble countertop. Her fingers carded back into his hair the moment the job was done, and she keened into his lips as his fingers tugged at her breast once again.

All of a sudden, Gold could feel hot, wet flesh against the crotch of his pyjamas. He groaned, and couldn’t help bucking his hips against hers.

Her hands were at his waist now, and she tugged down his pyjama pants. He felt them pool at his feet, and knew he probably looked ridiculous, with his arse hanging out in his kitchen in the middle of the night.

He didn’t have time to think about it. His fingers had found their way between her legs, and he stroked her as he kissed her, amazed to find her already wet. “Was thinking about you,” she confessed, a gasp against his lips, shivering when his index finger ran lightly over her swollen clit. “Hoped cereal and a book would work like a cold shower, but it didn’t. All I could think of was you.”

Gold’s thoughts stumbled to a halt, a low groan leaving his lips. He kissed her, messily, all tongue and teeth and urgency. “Don’t have anything,” he managed to groan out. “I can’t-“

“It’s okay,” she replied, “I’m on the Pill. You’re clean, right?”

He nodded, shakily: Whale had cleared him not three weeks ago, after he’d gotten himself immediately tested following Cora’s departure. The thought of being inside Belle with nothing between them, her skin and his and nothing in-between, made him pulse and ache.

Her sweet thighs parted, just like in his dreams. Those dainty little feet crossed at the small of his back, and she buried her moans in his mouth as he thrust in deep, sheathing himself in her in one thrust. She was so very hot, so wet and tight, that Gold thought he’d lose his mind. Her forehead bumped and rested against his, their breaths coming short and sharp, ragged and deep, his hands on her hips holding her in place so he could set up a fast, deep rhythm.

“Oh, god,” she moaned, burying her face in his shoulder, her body coiled around his. Gold was beyond thought, beyond words. He was buried to the hilt in her wonders, Belle’s soft, delicate, supple, strong little body wrapped tight around his, like she’d never ever let go.

He didn’t want her to. Dear god, he didn’t want her to.

And that was the problem, the very root of it: he wanted so much more than this from her. He wanted her to stay after Neal moved out, wanted her to give up any idea of living in that little apartment over the library and just stay here with him. He wanted to wake up every morning with her sweet little body warming his bed; he wanted to eat breakfast with her, to talk about their days, to surprise her for lunch and make her dinner. He wanted to be able to make love to her whenever they wanted, and feel no shame or guilt.

But this was what they had, instead: this liminal space, these whispered confessions, the electricity and the madness, pleasure and stolen bliss, and always the unspoken understanding that they could have nothing more.

He was drawing close, the heat and slick clench of her almost too much to bear. He clumsily shoved a hand between them, and sought out her clit again, hoping to drive her up to meet him, to satisfy her before he found his own release.

Belle gasped and cried out, and he kissed her deep to silence her, to keep from waking up the rest of the house. Her legs trembled and weakened around his waist, her channel fluttering and dripping around his cock as he worked her to completion. She gasped against his open mouth as she came, her hips jerking and bucking helplessly against him. She dragged him over the pinnacle with her, the sensation of her clenching hard around him, her whole body shaking with pleasure too much to bear. Lights burst behind his eyes as he spilled himself inside her, jerking and thrusting erratically, needing to be as close to her as possible, as deep inside her as he could be, even just for now, even in just these lightning moments.

It was over as soon as it had begun. Gold stepped back, shame replacing pleasure as his limp cock slipped out of her. He backed away from her, her arms and legs releasing as she eyed him warily.

Without looking at her, Gold found the kitchen roll and handed her a clutch of paper towels. He cleaned himself up without looking at her, and had his pyjama pants back in place before turning back to face her.

“You’re going to run now, aren’t you?” she sighed, and oh gods above she sounded so sad, so broken at the thought.

“I should,” he reminded her. It was easier to think clearly, with the hormones and tension momentarily weakened.

“Why?” she asked, incredulous, like she couldn’t understand the words he was saying. “What’s wrong with us being close?”

“You’re so young, Belle,” he said, helplessly, gesturing to all of her in one motion. Her shorts were still puddled on the floor beneath her feet – evidence of what they’d done.

“I’m well over the age of consent,” she informed him, tartly. “I’ve had several serious relationships, I’ve lived on the other side of the world from my home for half a decade now… I’m not sure how much more mature I have to be for you to stop feeling like a cradle-robber. Is this just about Neal?”

It was on his lips to speak the truth, unbidden and unconsidered. Of course it was about Neal. It was about Neal leaving, and likely never truly coming back. It was about Belle potentially moving to Storybrooke, and how desperately he’d like to see more of her, to see all of her, all of the time. It was about his being forty-five and seeking connection, long-term and committed, someone to love, and her being twenty-three and seeking a good time.

“What do you want from me, Belle?” he asked, the wrong question (the right question). Belle’s eyes were so open, so raw, he wanted to fall to his knees and kiss her feet, devote himself to her there and then.

“I want you,” she said. The universe was contained in that answer. “What I want is to be with you.”

How could he argue with that? How could he possibly deny her, when all he wanted was a moment more of her time, her company – one more smile, one more kiss?

He kissed her. _You have me_ , he tried to say, _you can have all of me you want_.


	6. Chapter 6

Belle knew when she was being avoided.

It wasn’t as if it didn’t make sense. After all, she could feel the guilt and shame radiating off of Gold even before their encounter in the kitchen. Whatever he’d been wallowing in before, it got a hundred times worse afterward.

Belle sighed, and tried to focus on her reading. She had nothing to do, which didn’t help in the slightest. She had any number of applications for jobs still hanging in the air, and the only one she cared about – her application to become Storybrooke’s head librarian, overseeing the reopening of the public library under the clock tower – was still in committee. That was, at least officially, the reason she was staying here in town, rather than taking Mulan’s invitation to come crash with her family in San Francisco, or visiting her cousin Robin in New York. She wanted to be present and on-hand should the Storybrooke City Council decide they needed anything else from their one and only applicant.

 _Unofficially_ , of course, she had any number of reasons to stay in Storybrooke. And at least half of them were Scottish, gorgeous, wore an expensive suit to do laundry, and had all but vanished.

Neal and Emma were a helpful distraction. Belle had hung out with them for the past few days, working their way through the three movies playing at the tiny Storybrooke cinema, going for hikes, and discovering the true depths of Neal’s teenage delinquency. She didn’t think they’d walked by a single building he didn’t have at least three routes to break into or out of. It would be impressive if it weren’t a little concerning.

But today, Neal and Emma had gone for a picnic up by his dad’s old cabin, and they’d been making noises about wanting to go alone. The moment Neal, of all people, had called the spot ‘romantic’, Belle had respectfully bowed out.

Which meant that she was left loafing around Gold’s empty house, all alone, more keenly aware than she had been since their interlude in the kitchen of how scarce he’d made himself afterward. He didn’t want to see her: his absence made that perfectly clear.

Belle sighed, and glanced at the clock. One pm: Gold’s lunch hour. For the first two weeks of her stay, he’d come home for lunch every day. His shop was only a pleasant ten minute walk from his home, and so he’d claimed he preferred to come home and make something fresh and worth eating than take something that would keep, and work through lunch. The five people who actually came to shop on a given day could wait until two.

But today – like yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that – he was nowhere to be seen. He left before she woke up; he came home after he knew she, Neal, and Emma had either left for dinner at Granny’s, or already eaten. He spent his evenings locked in his study. If she was lucky, Belle would exchange ten words with Gold through the whole day, which was quite a come down after enjoying whole glorious, stimulating, sometimes infuriating conversations and debates with him just days ago.

She missed him. Neal was her best friend, and Belle had always liked and got on well with Emma, but she really missed talking with Gold. She missed talking to him even more than she missed kissing him, or touching him, or stripping him naked and driving him deep inside her and –

Okay, maybe she didn’t just miss _talking_ to him. Belle’s heart raced and her cheeks flushed scarlet at the memory of his touch, which was somehow only intensifying with the time spent apart. More than one nice since their last encounter, she had only managed to get to sleep after first finding release by her own hand, driven over the edge to thoughts of him.

She had resigned herself to the sad fact that that might be her future. He clearly didn’t want their sexual relationship to continue, and while she thought his reasoning – her youth, his age, her relationship to his son – was flawed, it was understandable. She had to respect his decision, even if she thought it was a mistake. It didn’t mean they couldn’t even _speak_ though, right?

Even if they couldn’t have sex, their connection was worth preserving. She missed his company more than anything, and she knew how lonely he was. Even if Neal hadn’t confided his worries over his father’s relative isolation, Belle could tell from how he’d welcomed her conversation and company when she first arrived that he hardly had a thriving social life. They were compatible; he’d said as much himself. Even if that compatibility could only ever be platonic, Belle knew how valuable and rare true friends were.

If he wasn’t going to pull his head out of his ass and be an adult about this, then she would have to do it for him.

Belle set down her book, and marched into the kitchen, invigorated now she had a plan. She put together two thick BLTs, making sure to include extra mayo on Gold’s, and added two bottles of beer and two thick slices of the apple pie she’d baked a few days back, sealed in Tupperware tubs. She put it all in a large shopping bag, pulled on her shoes, and headed over to Gold’s shop.

He looked up in surprise when the bell rang over the door. “I’m sorry we’re – Belle!” his eyes widened, a rabbit caught in headlights. He swallowed hard, his eyes running over her before meeting hers once more. Belle fought the urge to sigh, or even roll her eyes. She was certain she wasn’t remotely scary enough to warrant that reaction.

“I brought lunch!” she said, as brightly as she could. His huge eyes glanced between the bag in her hands and her face, and she could him desperately seeking a way out. “I brought BLTs with beer and some of that amazing pie you made,” she continued, briskly, walking across the shop floor and placing the bag on his countertop. “I figured fresh food is always better than whatever’s been sitting in the back room for the past four hours, right?”

“I can’t take a break today, dearie,” he muttered, waving her aside like an annoying insect. His eyes were back on his work.

“Closed sign on the door says otherwise,” she replied, her voice taking on a brittle quality she didn’t like, but could hardly control. He was getting under her skin, and she hated that, because she knew this was just an act. He liked her, and he wanted her: she had more than enough evidence of both of those things. There was no amount of dismissive, arrogant cruelty he could throw at her now that would mitigate how he’d clung to her in the middle of the night, how he’d leaned into her like a flower to sunlight, or the desperation they had shared just to be close to one another. She knew he valued her, and the lie was what hurt her more than the content.

She knew full well he was avoiding her to put some distance between them. It made sense. It also pissed her off.

She put the bag down in front of him, covering his ledger. He sighed with annoyance, which she cheerfully ignored. “You have to eat sometime,” she continued, “so, do you want to keep working, or come sit in the back?”

He sighed, and finally dragged his eyes back up to meet hers. She saw the battle behind his eyes, his desire to be near her warring with his need to shut her out. “I can’t,” he said, again. He wasn’t talking about lunch.

“We need to talk,” she told him, dropping her own pretence, the brittle cheeriness she’d neither felt nor enjoyed. “And Neal won’t hear us here.”

“I don’t believe there’s anything to discuss,” he said, his voice sharp as broken glass. “Don’t blame me if you can’t take a hint.” She wanted to smack him for that little slice of cruelty. Maybe a solid slap would jolt him into resetting, bring back the sweet, funny, caring man she knew was inside his chest, the one she had been falling in love with until he vanished behind this icy veneer.

She hated this face of his, the one he showed to recalcitrant tenants and ungrateful clients, designed to inspire fear and remind everyone just who held the power here. It was all falsehood: a mask, an act, and a paper-thin one at that. He’d never shown this mask to her before, and that told her everything she needed to know. She affected him as deeply as he did her.

“Well,” she tilted her head to one side, challenging him with every word, “I would disagree with that. For starters, there’s the sex in your bed, the sex in your shower, the sex in your kitchen, and how messy and emotional things have gotten between us. And that’s without touching on how you’re clearly an idiot who seems to think that going cold and hard and avoiding me is going to solve anything.”

He swallowed, hard, and blanched a little. Belle rallied at that small victory. She didn’t usually unload like that – she valued honesty above all else, but there was a line between being honest and being brutal and blunt – but she had to get through to him. She had to make him see that there was something worth salvaging here.

She took a deep breath, “Now,” she said, with what she hoped was an encouraging smile, “Would you like to talk about this over sandwiches? I added extra mayo to yours.”

She didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, she turned on her heel, and took the bag through to the back room, busying herself laying out the spread on the clear space of worktable at the end. The world’s saddest-looking tuna salad sat in a Tupperware box at the other end of the bench, and Belle smirked to herself. There was no way in hell he’d have chosen that over the fresh BLT she offered if he wasn’t purposely avoiding her.

He followed behind her, and she felt him pause in the doorway, the floorboards creaking as he dithered. She turned to face him, and sat herself down in one of the free chairs, finally looking back over her shoulder to him.

“Aren’t you coming?” she asked. He swallowed, and fidgeted with his cane.

“We shouldn’t be alone together,” he told her: the first truly honest thing he’d said since her arrival. She shrugged.

“You refuse to talk to me even in company,” she said. “Do you think we shouldn’t be together at all?”

“I don’t want this – whatever this is – to become a burden to either one of us,” he told her, and in that one sentence she heard all his gentleness come rushing back, the soft, caring man she knew replacing that cold façade in moments. A knot released in Belle’s chest. When she released her breath, it felt as if the weight of the world slid from her shoulders.

“Then come talk to me about it,” she invited, beckoning him over. “You can sit with a table between us, and I promise not to molest you in front of the bacon.”

He swallowed, and she watched his Adam’s apple bob. A small smile came to his lips, involuntary and sweet, at her little joke. “It’s not you I’m worried about,” he muttered, and she grinned.

“Then I promise to be a total lady,” she said. “I’ll fend off your fiendish advances with my parasol.”

“You’re not carrying a parasol,” he noted, but to her delight he came and sat opposite her all the same. She pursed her lips, and tapped her chin with a finger, looking into the bag on the table.

“Shit, knew I forgot something,” she muttered. He snorted. “I’ll just have to make myself as undesirable as possible,” she shrugged. Then, to prove the point, she took the biggest bite she could of her BLT, getting mayo on at least half her chin in the process. She chased it with a huge gulp of her beer, and then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

She couldn’t have asked for better timing: a huge belch, the kind that would have had Neal applauding, followed immediately after.

“See?” she grinned, and hoped she had lettuce in her teeth for emphasis. He was staring at her, his lips twitching.

“Indeed, a truly disgusting display,” he muttered. She stuck out her tongue; he ignored her, and took a dignified bite of his own sandwich.

They ate in companionable silence, Belle with significantly more grace now her point had apparently been proven. She hadn’t come here to accost him again, she had come to make peace and talk things through. She didn’t try to speak to him again until they’d finished and were considering pie, and she felt the atmosphere was comfortable enough to broach the subject again.

“So,” she said, “You mentioned something about burdens?”

He swallowed his bite of pie, and looked at her with pleading eyes. “Belle, please, we don’t need to discuss this.”

“We do need to discuss this,” she insisted, and reached out an impulsive hand to cover his on the table. She regretted it immediately: touching him sent a fission of something powerful and addictive through her, sparking where her skin met his. She inhaled sharply, but didn’t pull back. She glanced down, and tried to rally her thoughts, “I know this isn’t easy,” she said, softly. “I know there’s complications-“

“My son isn’t a _complication_ ,” he told her, and with a sinking heart she felt him pull his hand back. “Belle, you’re young. You don’t understand-“

“What?” she demanded. “What don’t I understand? What it’s like to feel alone in the world? To fear losing everything that matters to you?” She felt a lump rising in her throat, and swallowed it down hard, horrified. She didn’t need to get her own stupid messy feelings involved on top of his. “I get it, okay?” She pulled back into herself, folding her arms protectively over her chest. “I get that the stakes are high. But I’m not asking to _marry_ you or - or even to keep sleeping with you, if it bothers you this much! I just want to be able to _talk_ to you!”

“Belle-“ He looked helpless, sad and lost and afraid, his face crumpling and his body sagging. She watched in horror as the wind left his sails, and he shook his head. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said. The endearment was the sweetest, saddest thing she’d ever heard.

“What are you sorry for?” she pressed. He shook his head.

“I’m sorry for letting this happen at all,” he replied. “For being too weak to keep the proper distance between us.”

She stared at him. “Do you not want me, Abraham?” She meant for it to come out challenging, hard, a pointed question to which they both knew the answer. She’d asked it before, the first night they’d spent together. Despite her efforts, it came out soft and questioning, even pleading.

“I think we’ve established that that isn’t the issue,” Gold sighed. “That night in the kitchen more than proved the opposite.”

“I don’t mean-“ she stopped herself, and took a deep breath, trying to gather her thoughts. Her meaning was unclear even to Belle herself, and she wondered when this had gotten so hard. “I don’t just mean sexually,” she said. “I mean to talk to or spend time with; I mean that I _miss_ you. I thought we were at least friends by now.”

“Friends?” he repeated, bewildered. Anyone else, Belle would have been hurt and offended that the thought of her friendship was so confusing, as if he wouldn’t deign to be friends with the likes of her. With Abraham, she was fairly certain that his difficulty was in figuring out why _she_ would befriend _him_ , not the other way around. Once again, she wondered at the damage done by those terrible, shadowy women he’d been with before she came along.

“Yes,” she said, firmly. “I know I’m one of Neal’s friends, but I’d hoped we’d moved past that by now. I mean, I don’t just think of you as my friend’s father. It’d be kind of weird if I did.”

“You think of me as your friend?” he asked, dubiously.

“Among other things,” she teased, and dared a flirtatious wink. She laughed at the puzzlement on his face.

“Belle, I-“ he started, stopped, shook his head. Even he didn’t seem to know what he wanted to say.

She reached out her hand, and covered his on the table again, gentle as could be. “You’ve been avoiding me,” she said. “And there’s no need.”

“What if…” he swallowed, hard, “What if I’m no good at being your friend?” he asked. There was a vulnerability in his voice that went deeper than just self-doubt.

“What do you mean?”

He smiled, a helpless, crooked smile she couldn’t help but love. “There’s things I think about with regard to you that are hardly _friendly_ , my dear,” he admitted. Something hot and tugging settled low in Belle’s stomach; the look in his eyes had turned darker and more intense than before.

“And you think I couldn’t fend off your advances with my parasol?” she teased. He considered the question.

“Didn’t you so carelessly forget your parasol today?” he queried. She laughed, delighted at him playing along with her silly game.

“Drat! You know, I did.” She rolled her eyes at her own apparent stupidity. “I’m so scatter-brained. Ditsy, even.”

“Hardly a word I’d apply to you,” he said. “You’re too clever for your own good.”

Belle had been told that before, and it wasn’t always meant well. In that tone of voice from Abraham Gold, however, it sounded like the highest compliment she’d ever heard. Her breath caught, and she felt her cheeks growing hot under his intense stare.

“I…” she swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. Her fingers tingled and burned where they touched his, the world holding its breath as their eyes met. She could drown in those rich dark eyes, and die a happy woman.

“I was avoiding you,” he admitted. His thumb traced gentle circles on the side of her thumb, and she thought just that gentle caress would drive her insane. She wanted so much more than that from him, for him to touch her everywhere and all at once. To have what she needed localised to such a tiny place was pure, sweet torture. “Because no matter how I feel, you’re still a friend of my son’s, and he would never forgive me. Nothing has changed.”

“He would,” she told him, and hoped to God she was right. Neal worried desperately for his father, and loved him with all his heart. Belle couldn’t imagine anything getting in the way of that.

But then, Belle couldn’t imagine why anyone with a parent who was loving, accepting, and alive, all at the same time, would turn that love away.

“You’re so bright, Belle,” Gold murmured. Those little strokes of his thumb were driving her insane. “You deserve better than to be saddled with the affections of someone like me. I’d just hold you back.”

“You’re an idiot,” she said, swallowing hard around a lump that had formed in her throat. “And I’m more than capable of making my own choices.”

“I didn’t mean-“

“You don’t get to decide how I feel, or what I do,” she told him, and while she meant to snap it, to have it come out hot and passionate, to shock him out of this terrible mind-set where he saw himself as a burden, it came out soft and gentle. Maybe that was better, she thought. It meant he kept holding her hand. “I do. I get to choose who… who I feel affection for. And whose affections I accept.”

“Neal has to come first, Belle,” Gold pleaded. “Please understand that.”

“I do,” she nodded, and squeezed his hand in reassurance. “So, we won’t do anything he’d disapprove of, right? We’ll be friends. Good friends, friends who share meals and talk about books, like we were before I got drunk and made everything weird. We’ll just pretend none of this happened, right?”

He looked at her for a long moment. Belle couldn’t help but feel flattered – and another of those tugs low in her belly, her body distinctly not on board with the idea of a strictly platonic relationship – that he felt he couldn’t keep his hands off her. “I don’t think I’ll be able to forget,” he told her, his voice soft and rich like caramel, melting her insides. She felt a shiver run down her spine.

“I’ll buy a parasol,” she added, half-jokingly. Her voice had turned huskier, lower, the desire tugging in her lower belly hard to ignore completely.

He laughed, a short and gusty thing, more a release of tension than anything else. “I didn’t enjoy avoiding you,” he admitted. She felt a certain victory at his use of the past tense. “But after what happened in the kitchen… it just seemed more prudent to keep the distance I always should have. Lonely old men shouldn’t press their attentions on beautiful young women, there are words for that.”

“I might agree,” she replied, “If you were a gross old pervert who had shown up at my door wasted and slurring about wanting a goodnight kiss. But none of those words suit you, Abraham, not even for a moment. And if you’ll recall, that was my line, not yours.”

Actually, thinking about it, if Gold had shown up drunk and confessing his attraction to her at midnight, Belle doubted the outcome would have been any different. She was almost certain she’d have hauled him into her room by his tie and had her way with him then and there, as she’d dreamed of for so long. But since her proposition was platonic friendship, admitting to three solid years of daydreaming and fantasising about him didn’t do her any favours.

“I should have turned you away,” he sighed. “I certainly shouldn’t have indulged it again the next day.”

“You deserve to be happy,” Belle told him, firmly, just as she had that first night together. She vowed then and there to say it as often as he needed to hear it, until he finally accepted he deserved better than the abject misery he appeared to be used to. “At the time, you seemed pretty happy to me. I’m not going to apologise for something I firmly believe we both enjoyed, even if we agree it won’t happen again.”

“Then you’re a stronger person than I,” he said, with a small smile.

She grinned, “Just call me Supergirl,” she said. “I even have the costume somewhere.” He looked up at her sharply, and she snorted through her nose. “Comic fan?”

“What little I remember from my misspent youth,” he said. “I’m sure you looked very fetching.”

”I’ll show you sometime,” she promised. “In a purely platonic way, of course.”

“Of course,” he murmured. Her breath caught at the hot look in his eyes. She was certain friends weren’t supposed to look at friends like that.

She took a deep breath, and withdrew her hand from his at last. She missed the contact the moment she did, and had to force herself to keep her smile sunny. “So,” she said, brightly. “I brought pie, remember? We could share it and talk about something friendly?”

“Such as?” he prompted, while she fished the two containers out of the bag. He accepted a fork; she shivered when her fingertips brushed his. His fingers were so long and dextrous, so talented, so deft, and it didn’t help the heat between her thighs at all to know exactly what he could do with them.

“How are you getting on with _Nights At The Circus_?” she asked. He tilted his head to one side, and took the bait, launching into an analysis of the book’s conclusion that had Belle soon engaged in a genuine discussion.

The pie was really, really good. It was almost good enough to make Belle forget how badly she wished he’d throw caution to the wind, and her down onto the little cot in the corner.

Almost.

\---

“They’re eating pie, it’s fine,” Emma reported, and ducked back down under the window ledge. Neal had his hands pressed to his eyes.

“I was certain they were going to have sex again,” he groaned. “The mental images won’t go away!”

Emma slumped onto the ground next to him, her back to the wall, and braced her feet on the sidewalk with her arms on her bent knees. “You’re being a baby about this, you know,” she said, matter-of-factly. Neal scowled at her.

“How would you feel if your mom decided she was going to leave your dad and run off with Graham?” he asked. Emma gave him a dull look.

“Well first off my mom and dad have been happy together for twenty years,” she said. “So I’m not constantly low-key worrying that she’s lonely and isolated. You, on the other hand, were all concerned not a month ago that your dad’s break up meant he’d be all by himself again and fall apart when you moved to Florida. So it’s really not the same thing.”

“He couldn’t have found someone his own age?” he complained, and God he knew he sounded like a whiny toddler, he _knew_ that. He had it confirmed when his girlfriend’s hand connected with the back of his head. “Ow!”

“You’re being a brat, Neal,” Emma said, bluntly. “And like, for a few days I was okay with it, I let it happen. You’ve indulged me often enough. But now it’s time for you to pull your head out of your ass, okay? I know you saw what I just saw.”

It was true: Neal knew exactly what she’d seen, because he’d seen it too. Belle and his dad had been holding hands over the table, staring at each other like they were the only two people in the whole world. He’d never seen his dad look so soft, not like that anyhow. The only other person his dad looked at with anything like that kind of emotion was Neal himself, and it had a very different cast to it then. He’d never seen his father so tender or so lost.

Neal had first met Belle when she was with her jerk-off first boyfriend George. Neal was the one she’d run to when she found out George was cheating on her, and they’d been best friends ever since. He’d been at her side through her relationship with Ariel, and then the thing she’d had with Will in their final year. He’d been the one who’d laughed down the phone and made her stop crying and blaming herself, the night she’d nearly bitten Will’s dick off.

He knew her. He knew what she looked like when she liked someone; when she cared about them; when she wanted to jump their bones. He’d even seen what love looked like on her face, the months she and Ariel had been at their happiest, before Ariel had gotten a grant to study marine biology in the South China Sea and they’d had to break up.

It was all nothing compared to what he’d seen when Belle looked at his father.

Neal had felt embarrassed to witness it, like he was seeing an intensely private moment, even though they’d just been eating sandwiches and talking. He had no idea what they’d been talking about – with the windows closed, all they’d gotten was the visual – but he hadn’t been able to watch for long. It felt like spying on something he wasn’t meant to see.

Emma was right. He needed to get his shit together, if he didn’t want to risk hurting two of the most important people in his life.

“They’re in love, aren’t they?” he asked, rubbing his face with his hands. Emma’s arm came around his back, and she rubbed slowly in soothing circles.

“Sure as hell looks that way to me,” she agreed.

“But they haven’t been in the same room since you got here,” Neal said, finally pulling his head up and looking at her. “I mean we’ve been with her pretty much twenty-four-seven, and I haven’t heard any…” He shuddered at the memory – that would always be gross, thinking about his dad having any kind of sex life, regardless of who it was with. “Well, any more noises coming from his room at night. Do you think they’re avoiding each other?”

“That’s what this test was for, right? To see the mice would do with the cats not around? I’d say their avoiding days are over.”

“Right,” Neal nodded, thinking it over. “Fine, fine,” he threw up his hands, conceding defeat. “They’re perfect for each other, they’re clearly deeply in love, and I shouldn’t get in the way of their happiness, right?”

“ _There_ you go,” Emma grinned, and gave him a peck on the temple. “Such a smart boy, you got there in the end!”

He scowled at her; she stuck out her tongue. “It’s still weird thinking about my dad having sex with my best friend.”

“Best practice is to not imagine your parents having sex of any kind with anyone,” Emma replied, sagely. “Speaking as someone who’s walked in on her parents more than once.”

“That’s probably best,” Neal agreed. “So what do we do now?”

Emma looked at him. “You wanna know what I think?” she asked. Neal grinned.

“Always.”

“I think you can’t say a goddamn word to them,” she said. Neal frowned at her.

“Why?”

“Look, if you say you know, they’ll both panic, right? Because either you support them being together, so then they feel like they have to be a couple and get super serious to justify what might well have been just a one night stand where they caught feelings-“

“Ew,” Neal interjected. Emma snorted.

“Grow up, it happens.” She tossed her hair back. “Remember how we got together?

Neal grinned, and conceded the point. “At least they used a bed, I guess.”

“They get points for class,” Emma winked. “But we get points for creativity. Anyway, so yeah, if you tell them you know and support it, it becomes super serious and familial and shit way too fast. It means she has to decide then and there if she’s ready to be your stepmom, and he has to decide if he’s ready to _give_ you a stepmom, and that’s way too much to put on them this early.”

Neal thought about it, and had to agree. He couldn’t imagine a way to convincingly support a casual relationship between his dad and his best friend without it seeming weird or disingenuous, and either way totally unconvincing. And she knew his papa: the moment there seemed like trouble, he’d spiral and make exactly the wrong decision, and probably drive Belle away by accident.

“I’m really lucky to have a girlfriend who’s smarter than me, aren’t I?” he said, and kissed her. Emma grinned against his lips.

“Yes, you are,” she agreed. “ _But_ if you say you know and it seems like you _don’t_ support it…”

“Then they never speak again, Belle moves to Alaska and takes up ice fishing, and my dad becomes a sexless hermit forever and ever,” Neal nodded, imagining that conversation all too well. “Gotcha.”

“Well maybe without the ice fishing,” she said. “I mean Belle would die in an icy place. I don’t think she owns a pair of flats.”

Neal snorted, and shook his head. “So what _do_ we do?”

Emma gave a slow grin, the grin that told him she had a cunning plan. Neal fucking _loved_ that grin. It meant that what came next would be kinky, criminal, or downright insane, and it was always, always amazing.

“We play fairy godmother,” she said. “And get them to figure it out ‘ _on their own_ ’,” – she punctuated her words with air-quotes –“and tell you themselves.”

“You wanna match-make my dad and my best friend?” Neal clarified. Emma nodded.

“Yes, I do.” She looked at him sidelong, that grin he loved so much still in place, challenging him to match her, to be her partner-in-crime once again. “You in?”

Neal felt himself smile, the idea becoming less insane by the minute. After all, he’d met the sort of woman who was usually into his dad, and they were all terrible people. Even his mother had ended up cheating on him and running away, leaving him heartbroken to raise Neal alone. Belle wasn’t like that. Belle was the kindest person he knew, and easily the smartest. Honestly, she was one of his favourite people in the world. He’d never known her to be cruel, or to lie, or to cheat. She was strong, and good, and all the shit she’d been through in her life had only served to make her more of those things, not less.

He loved and trusted her like family already. Looking at it that way, who better to become an actual part of his family than someone who already felt that way, and who he knew – even if it didn’t work out – would treat his father well?

Neal matched her smile with his own, ideas already forming in his head. “Sounds like a plan.”


End file.
